Funding Liberty! Table of Contents

Funding Liberty!

Chapter 17

Arizona, Land of the Two Libertarian Parties

We now take an aside from Presidential politics to visit scenic Arizona, land of the two Libertarian Parties. Or perhaps one Libertarian Party. The legal and political situation in Arizona has been, to put it mildly, complex. A full recounting of Arizona events might well consume a full book this size. I am not writing that book, so you shall see here a compressed description of events.

I begin with the cast of characters. For the past half-decade there have been two organized Libertarian groups in Arizona, one of which regularly sued the other to gain ownership of the Party. Each group has associated with it a series of different geographic and other names. In the Summer of 2000 names and acronyms included

My sources agree that both groups have supporters in both cities. The ALP and ALPI acronyms are very similar; I'll refer to the two sides as the Phoenix group (ALP) and the Tucson group (ALPI). My friends who have moved to Arizona uniformly speak favorably of most of the people in both groups.

The Tucson group won the latest round of litigation and is currently recognized by the State as the legal Libertarian Party in Arizona. The Phoenix group has formally dissolved at the moment. The Phoenix group has never filed litigation against the Tucson group, and says it has no intent to litigate at present. It also appears to have little intent of cooperating with or supporting the Tucson group or its candidates. In the absence of third-party litigation that might affect the situation, relationships between the Tucson and Phoenix groups are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

The two groups are split by many issues. Historically, each side has been willing to lay out its position openly, so I can say with reasonable accuracy what each side says it is fighting about. I have spoken to a reasonable number of Arizona Libertarians, members of the Phoenix and Tucson groups. I certainly have not spoken to all of them. These people didn't all talk about all the same topics, but—in separate conversations—for the most part they agreed with each other. I should specifically thank Paul Schauble and Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, who assembled time-lines of past events. I should also thank Ernie Hancock, Paul Schauble, and Chris Tavares, who sent corrections to an earlier draft of this chapter.

For many questions there are subtexts and buried issues. The formal question dividing the two groups is 'who is the legally-recognized Libertarian Party in Arizona?' A rational subtext is 'why does anyone care?'. What do you get out of having state recognition? In fact, there are concrete issues that appear to divide the two organizations.

A more Libertarian question might be 'To what extent can the state regulate the organization of a political party?' The Phoenix group had conducted its activities while not following a variety of State regulations, many of which could be argued to be inconsistent with Eu vs. California, simply by going about its business and ignoring the state. State officials did not attempt to enforce their own statutes. The ultimate litigation between the Phoenix and Tucson groups was filed by the Tucson group, not the state, and was settled not over the state election code but over the technicalities of Roberts' Rules of Order as several of the most esoteric of those rules pertained to events at a state convention.

In a traditional detective novel, the hero often makes progress by asking 'where is the money?'. There are good reasons to suppose that money was a major issue behind the conflict, both at the state level and at the national level.

Money? Arizona has a so-called 'Clean Elections' Law, under which public money goes to funding election campaigns, if the State legislature appropriates the money. A candidate has to raise a modest amount of money, and then receives a very large payment from the state to fund his campaign. The ratio of taxpayer money to money raised from private donors could be as large as ten to one. Possession and use of this money became a substantial political issue.  Details of the Clean Election law and its municipal equivalents have been the subject of litigation, and have changed over the course of time.

Substantial Issues Dividing the Arizona Factions

What were the two Arizona groups arguing about? Why did they care which of them was the state-recognized Libertarian Party? The substantial benefits of state recognition were rather limited. The largest single benefit is that state parties are entitled to copies of the voter rolls. These rolls reveal Party affiliations of registered voters. Because the Phoenix group viewed their members to be the registered Libertarian voters, this list was their one reliable way of finding their own members.

In Arizona, state recognition gives a state party very little power. Below the Presidential level, the State Party does not control who gets on the ballot as a Libertarian. In Arizona candidates get on the primary election ballot by collecting signatures, and advance from the primary election to the general election by winning their primary. A State Party organization can refuse to endorse or support candidates who do not support all of its positions, but access to the primary and general election ballots is controlled by the voters, not by the state committee. In Arizona, primaries are open. Independent voters can vote in the Libertarian Party primary election.  There is no guarantee that the winner of a Libertarian primary has any support from the state's 18,000 Libertarians rather than the state's 350,000 independents. Indeed, in an earlier election cycle the Phoenix group was the legal State Party.  It had put forth Tom Rawls as its candidate for governor. An anonymous last moment mailing, accusing Rawls of financial irregularities, led to his defeat in the primary by a candidate supported by the Tucson group.

The two groups also had different strategies. Interviews with Tucson supporters clarified the Tucson group's underlying strategy. Their plan was to run paper candidates who would do minimal campaigning for municipal office, raise money to qualify the candidates for Clean Elections money, and accept the Clean Elections money. Clean Elections money would then primarily be used to strengthen the state party by registering additional members of the state party. The difficulty with this approach, which was recognized by the Tucson group, is that a Libertarian registrant who has had no other contact with the party is unlikely to be activated, and will likely just sit there as campaigns swirl around him.

To overcome this difficulty, the Tucson group put forth a sound strategy emphasizing local organization, based on electing people as Precinct Committeemen. Each committeeman and committeewoman was to do organizing work in his or her own ward and precinct to convert previously-registered voters into reliable activists. The committeeperson approach had the significant challenge that state committeepeople were elected on a rigid timeline fixed by the State of Arizona. Volunteers could only be elected on the state's schedule. Readers will recognize obvious work-arounds to the State Election code.

The Phoenix group had not been especially interested in Party registration drives, such as the one launched by the National Committee. In the early 1990s, registration growth was tracking the growth in party activities, and was in fact growing year after year. It was reasonably expected that by 2004 or so the Party would have attained permanent major party status by virtue of having enough registered voters. Some activists, noting the success of the 1994 Buttrick Campaign at bringing in new Libertarians, felt that major party status might be achieved sooner, perhaps by 1998. With enough money, an adequate count of registered voters could be attained earlier than 2004. However, the count of registered voters by itself bought the State Party few particular benefits. The Phoenix group believed that the money spent registering additional Libertarian Party members would better have been spent strengthening the State Party by running better elections and referenda.

The Phoenix group was as interested in the Clean Elections Act money as the Tucson group, but for an entirely different reason. The Phoenix group viewed acceptance of Clean Elections Act money as a violation of the Party's principles and By-Laws. They vehemently disapproved of the Tucson group's decision to accept State Clean Elections Act money, and refused to support any Libertarian party candidate who chose to accept that money. Part of this dispute apparently went away with changes in the state election law. For candidates for statewide office the dispute remains active.

Historical Notes on Arizona Libertarianism

The Libertarian Party of Arizona was founded in 1975, and put its first candidates on the ballot in 1976. One of these was Michael Emerling (Cloud), who ran for U.S. Congress in Tucson and received 2.4% of the vote. The Party progressed and grew. Its 1989 State Chair was Peter Schmerl, who was a Pima County activist. By 1990, one can identify early strains of the disputes between the Party's two factions. An article written by Michael Cloud and distributed by the Marrou campaign explained why Party candidates should take matching funds if available. Other Libertarians have expressed the contrary view. The issue refers back to the Non-Initiation of Force statement, which will be discussed in this Chapter's Appendix.

The Arizona Party continued to grow. Cloud moved to work for the Marrou for President (Libertarian, 1992) campaign. On September 1, 1991, Cloud appeared in Chicago before the Libertarian National Committee, reiterating the campaign's desire to work closely with the National Party. In particular, addressing the LNC he indicated that 'the campaign's books are open for our (the LNC's) inspection at any time' and 'all new names obtained during the campaign would be considered the co-property of the LNC and would be turned over to both the national and state parties'. In 1992, Cloud and the Marrou campaign went their separate ways.

By 1996 the Presidential Campaign which Cloud had for a time directed was associated took a different stand. The 2300+ names and addresses of Browne donors cost the Libertarian National Committee more than $58,000 dollars to acquire.

In 1994, Arizona Libertarian John Buttrick ran for State Governor. He was later a Libertarian National Committee member and in 2001 was appointed as a judge by sitting Republican Governor Jane Hull. The Phoenix Party by this date was vigorous and active. It opened its own office, and covered expenses in part by raffling off a series of assault rifles and other weapons. The choice of raffle items gained significant public attention. The first conflict between the Phoenix and Tucson disputes reportedly happened in late 1994, with a dispute over ownership of a bank account held in the name of the Arizona Libertarian Party. The money eventually returned to the Phoenix group.

In 1995, the Tucson group invoked their interpretation of the laws covering internal party organization (ARS 16-521 to 525) to form the "Arizona Libertarian Party State Committee" and filed with the Arizona Secretary of State under that name. Arizona does not have laws restricting political parties from using extremely similar names, so there was room to disagree as to whether the ALPSC was the current Arizona Libertarian party, or was a new Party that had a name highly similar to the name of another, older Party. In April 1995, the Libertarian National Committee weighed in with a letter to the Tucson group, demanding that they stop using the name. The Tucson group continued to use the name. The LNC did nothing further to defend control of the name 'Libertarian'.

1995 brought the first of a series of Party State Conventions at which disputes over proxies, By-Laws, and Rules of Order became prominent. 1995 also brought the first intervention by the LNC in Arizona State Party affairs, in the form of a proposal by the National Party for a party registration drive. Phoenix group State Chair Tamara Clark sent a letter expressing the State Party's gratitude for assistance, but expressing concern that the registration drive might not be competently run, in which case the State Party might take the blame. The State Party asked that it have direct control of the effort or that National Party give the State Party a 'hold harmless' statement. The Phoenix group did not view a registration campaign as the most effective use of activist efforts at this time.

Voter registration instead became part of the Kahn for Mayor campaign in Tucson, which by report received $50,000 in state Clean Elections funds, and apparently used the larger part of those funds to register Libertarian voters. The National Party apparently provided manpower for the effort. The Tucson group then launched the first of a series of lawsuits to establish its claim to be the legitimate State Party.

The National Committee staff was highly responsive to the Tucson group. When in 1998 the leadership of the Tucson group claimed to the National Committee that they had secured control of a merged state party, the name of their claimed state chair immediately appeared on the National Party web site as the true state chair. When the Phoenix group told the National Committee Staff that the National Committee had been misinformed, at that someone else was state chair, the National Committee Staff refused to make the correction or withdraw the name of the listed chair. It continued to list the Tucson group's state chair on its web pages. Given the dispute, an impartial National Party could have noted on its web pages that there was an internal Party dispute in the state, and then listed either both State Chairs or neither State Chair. The pages instead listed only one State Chair, even after the National Party's attention was called to the issue. Thus, prior to the LNC action on the affiliation issue the National Party had already intervened in the Libertarian dispute in Arizona, supporting one side over the other.

The National Committee Chooses an Affiliated Arizona Party and Experiences the Consequences of Its Actions

At its August 1999 meeting the Libertarian National Committee entered the fray by invoking its own By-Laws, specifically

"ARTICLE 8: AFFILIATE PARTIES

6. The National Committee shall have the power to revoke the status of any affiliate party, for cause, by a vote of 3/4 of the entire National Committee. The affiliate party may challenge the revocation of its status by written appeal to the Judicial Committee within 30 days of receipt of notice of such revocation. Failure to appeal within 30 days shall confirm the revocation and bar any later challenge or appeal. The National Committee shall not revoke the status of any affiliate party within six months prior to a Regular Convention."

After an extremely long meeting and a long series of motions that were defeated or ruled out of order by National Chair David Bergland, the National Committee passed a motion targeting its Arizona affiliate. According to the Minutes of that meeting, "The motion on disaffiliation passed with 14 affirmative votes: Bergland, Bisson, Butler, Dehn, Dixon, Franke, Fylstra, Givot, Hall, Lark, Neale, Ruwart, Schwarz, and Smith. Buttrick and Tuniewicz voted against the motion. Savyon abstained."

Having discarded its historic state affiliate, the LNC then voted to poll its Arizona members to determine which state party group should be given affiliation. This innocent-sounding step led to considerable difficulties, because there were three groups involved, namely the Phoenix group, the Tucson group, and the National Party. Membership lists for these three groups were substantially non-overlapping. In particular, the rolls of the National Party included many dues-paying, oath-signing National Party members who were registered to vote as Democrats or Republicans, and who were thus from the point of view of the Phoenix group not Libertarians at all. Furthermore, there were 15,000 registered Libertarians in the state, all members of the Phoenix group, most of whom were not National Party members; these Libertarians were not polled. The National Party's poll allegedly indicated a preference for the Tucson group, so the National Committee cited the poll as a justification when it made the Tucson group its state affiliate in Arizona.

Only gradually does the recognition appear to have percolated through the National Committee that the National Party's actions had had no effect on the Arizona state government, which continued to recognize the Phoenix group as the lawful Libertarian State Party of Arizona.

Discrepancies between the National Committee's actions and the requirements of the Party By-Laws are apparent. The Party By-Laws specify that disaffiliation must be "for cause". "For cause" is a term of art with a very well understood meaning, namely that the party against which action is being taken must have done something wrong. Furthermore, that wrong has to be specified, so that the accused can have due process by offering a defense.

What wrong had the ALP committed? The assertion was made in some quarters that the cause was that the LNC could not tell which group was its affiliate. It is not clear how the inability of the LNC to understand what was happening in Arizona could constitute 'cause' against the Phoenix group. Indeed, on the date of the disaffiliation there was ongoing litigation between the two groups as to which group was the real Libertarian Party in Arizona. The Phoenix group recommended that the National Party should postpone action until the judge ruled; their recommendation was not accepted by the National Committee.

It is extremely hard to avoid the conclusion that the LNC's disaffiliation of the Phoenix group violated Party By-Laws, which require that the disaffiliation be 'for cause'. No rational cause was specified in the motion, nor does such a cause appear to be noted in the LNC Minutes. As was shown at the start of the book when 'support' and 'conflict of interest' were discussed, the Libertarian National Committee does not appear to have been heavily attached to careful textual analysis of its own By-laws. It is therefore unsurprising that the National Committee's interpretation of 'for cause' was situationally driven.

It is important to emphasize that the 'for cause' issue that was placed before the Libertarian National Committee, and the issues then being litigated in Arizona, are entirely separate. The Arizona State Courts eventually resolved the questions at hand on the basis of the State Party By-Laws and Roberts' Rules of Order. The National Committee did not hear or review these arguments. To say 'the National Party did not obey its own by-laws in the decision its made' does not speak to the question of which group was the legitimate state party in Arizona.

A variety of other reasons for disaffiliating the Phoenix group have been suggested:

There is significant circumstantial evidence that some factions within the Libertarian National Committee were pursuing disaffiliation in order to secure a friendlier state party delegation at the next National Convention. In 1996, the Arizona Party delegation had been filled with supporters of Rick Tompkins, who was supported by the Phoenix group. There were sound reasons to believe that a delegation to the 2000 Convention from the Tucson group would be more supportive of the Browne faction, while a delegation from the Phoenix group would be more sympathetic to any of Browne's opponents.

By changing its affiliate, the National Committee derived a direct financial benefit. The Phoenix group wanted to keep state and national party memberships separate. The Tucson group joined the Unified Membership Plan. Under the Unified Membership Plan, the National Party collected all membership dues for state and national groups. What did the LNC do with the money it raised? Under UMP state membership dues are doled out to the state party at the rate of one dollar per month. If you joined your state party in January, part of your state membership dues would not reach your state party until the following New Year. For current members, this delay was cancelled by startup payments, but if party membership grew new member dues reached the state organization well after members actually joined.  In Summer 1999, the LNC planned that through Project Archimedes it would experience enormous membership growth.

The National Party also used the membership renewal letters to ask for additional contributions. State Parties received a very modest part of those contributions, as an increase in the $1 per month they were paid for each member, namely

Members or contributors who have contributed $100 or more to the national party in the last 12 months, $2/month; $250 or more, $3/month; $500 or more, $4/month; $1000 or more, $5/month.

Many members make their one extra donation for the year at the same time that they renew their memberships. Under UMP, state contribution fundraising at the time of membership renewals was transferred en bloc to the National Party. Under UMP, the National Party kept all but a pittance of those extra contributions. Thus, by joining UMP a state was likely to transfer its donors in large part to the National Party.

Finally, the National Party received a financial benefit because it did not maintain an escrow account for state dues owed under the UMP program. Dues were instead spent more or less when received by the National Party. For new members, UMP states were effectively giving the National Party an interest-free loan averaging half of the year's state dues. The National Party piously hoped that future income would permit it to make UMP payments to state parties in a timely way, much the way the Federal government piously hopes that future Social Security taxes will allow the Federal government to pay Social Security benefits in a timely way when their recipients expect them. In late 2001, the pious hope came extremely close to expiring. The National Office made an emergency electronic appeal for donations to allow it to cover UMP payments, and then claimed that the appeal permitted the payments to be made. It now appears that the National Office's initial representation of its financial situation had been disingenuous, and that it would in any event have been able to cover its obligations to the states. The piety of the hope had still been exposed to the membership.

The Phoenix group did not avail itself of its opportunity under the By-Laws to appeal the disaffiliation decision to the Party Judicial Committee, so after the statutory 30 days the disaffiliation became final. It appears that the bulk of the National Committee misunderstood the implications of these events. The National Committee appears to have believed that the Phoenix group had accepted the validity of the disaffiliation decision and had therefore agreed that the Tucson group was now the state party that the Phoenix group should support. The Phoenix group had in fact concluded that Libertarian National Committee, Inc., had the privilege of choosing its own affiliates, had willingly and voluntarily chosen the Tucson group as its affiliate, and that the Phoenix group was no longer responsible for the actions of LNC, Inc. or the Tucson group. In particular, Libertarian National Committee, Inc. and its chosen affiliate now had the privilege of getting their Presidential candidate on the Arizona ballot.

The National Committee also appears to have assumed that the State Party was legally required to run the Presidential candidate chosen at the National Committee's national convention. Apparently a telephone call was made to an official in the Arizona State government, asking whether such an obligation existed. The answer was in the affirmative. It was clearly not recognized that this is a highly esoteric legal question, referring to an issue that may well not have arisen before in the history of Arizona, and that a credible answer required a written inquiry and extensive research by the Arizona state government. The minor detail that, while the Tucson group was willing to put Browne on the ballot, it did not have ballot access, was ignored. Also, once the Phoenix Group had been disaffiliated, it is not clear why it was being assumed by the National Committee that the Phoenix group would honor the nominating convention of the Libertarian Party of the United States and not, say, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, since the Phoenix group, by the choice of the LNC, had no further affiliation with Libertarian National Committee, Inc.

Based on my conversations with its members, the Phoenix group did not view itself as being bound by decisions of political parties with which it was not affiliated, including the Revolutionary Socialists, the Democrats,...or the Libertarian Party of the United States. They emphasized to me that the LNC disaffiliated them, not the other way around, so National Party members had no legitimate complaint when the Phoenix Group accepted the validity of the National Committee's action. The National Committee had the idea that it could simply send the Phoenix group on its way, and had done so. Seemingly, the National Committee had assumed that without National Party affiliation the Phoenix group would roll over and die. This assumption proved to be invalid.

The Incoming Train Wreck

In 1999 it was already obvious that to a fair number of people that the split between the two Arizona Libertarian Parties might well cause problems with ballot access in Arizona. Phoenix group members attending the Summer 1999 LNC meeting specifically raised the issue. LNC member and Arizona resident John Buttrick raised it again at the November LNC meeting. In December 1999, Libertarian Bob Hunt raised the issue to a wider Libertarian audience via email lists. In Spring 2000, ballot access expert Richard Winger yet again raised this issue with the Libertarian body politic. No action was taken by any group, during the statutory petitioning period, to put a national candidate on the ballot in Arizona as an independent.

Prior to the National Convention I sent a memo to a variety of Libertarian lists, pointing out the issues and the alternatives—none of which looked very promising at the time. That memo, which had nothing to do with my campaign for National Chair, came after a bit of discussion on the Presidential nomination issue. Here's what I reported in early Summer 2000:

"In Arizona, there appear to be only two points at which being the state- recognized party actually has material consequences:

1) The major party is given the list of registered voters.

(2) The major party appoints Presidential Electors and determines whose name will appear on the election Ballot. There are also points where being the state-recognized Party has political significance but does not inhibit freedom of action.

The first point affects how people run for office in Arizona. The second point matters for the rest of us. The core issue is that the Phoenix group agrees that the LNC has chosen the Tucson group as its affiliate. This means, in the Phoenix group's opinion, that the Tucson group has the privilege and duty of getting the LNC's Presidential candidate on the ballot.

I will again avoid names, but it's even money that the candidate we choose in Anaheim will not be the Arizona Party's choice. If the choices differ, the LPUS Presidential candidate will not be on the ballot in a simple way in all 50 states.

How can Libertarians outside of Arizona get around this? I now list alternatives. I'm not saying which one I support. I'm not saying each one is a good idea.

Alternatives

We have several choices of action here as ways of dealing with the issue. I first note several solutions which would work if they succeeded, but which are not obviously likely to succeed.

1) Nominate a mutually acceptable candidate. This requires that there is a mutually acceptable candidate.

2) Put our candidate on the Arizona ballot by petition. This requires nine and a half thousand signatures (reports Richard Winger) due by June 14. [June 29 was the date under the pre-1999 law.] Winger noted this option on the lpus lists several weeks ago. Almost no one bought into it. Given available time, the logistics approach the impossible. Also, the petition must name the candidate. We can't, e.g., petition for Hess and then try to substitute Gorman or Browne after the convention.

I am reasonably certain that no current Presidential candidate has the resources to do his own petitioning. If the LNC runs a drive for one of our candidates, that drive must be done in advance of the convention, and must specify the candidate by name. A candidate with ballot access in Arizona would have a real leg up on getting the nomination, a leg up courtesy of the LNC. I report with absolute certainty that such an action by the LNC would have very severe internal repercussions within the Libertarian Party. (I have no evidence that anyone is trying to do this, and it is probably too late now.)

3) Sue the Arizona group. Make them run our candidate. My good legal sources say this approach will fail badly, either in the State Courts or the Federal Courts. Also, this approach will permanently poison relations between LPUS and the Phoenix group.

4) Post convention, the Libertarian National Committee could announce that it had reconsidered. For example, it could decide that the Bylaws require removals to be for cause, and it did not have adequate cause to strip the Phoenix group of affiliation. If the Phoenix group accepted re-affiliation, our candidate would go on the ballot. However, my sources on the National Committee say that current LNC members will not vote for this approach. If you want to try this, at Anaheim you need to replace a majority of the National Committee.

There are also paths that do not solve the problem in 2000, but could solve the problem by 2004.

5) Ignore it. Hope the issue goes away. It's worked for other parties. Richard Winger has listed major-party examples in the 20th century where this approach was followed. A State Party did not run the national candidate in one election. They did in the next. If enough personalities turn over on both sides, many things become possible.

6) Get ballot access for the group the LNC recognizes. This approach requires a modest change of name for the Tucson group—not a problem; Al Gore's party is not the "Democratic" in one state—and registering a large number of people into that party.

7) Start from the beginning. Get state recognition under some name for a third Libertarian group, one that does not presently exist, does not have a long list of feuds, does not allow for some period the principals of the first two groups to serve as its statewide officers, and which has as a membership condition for those principals that they may not resort to litigation against any of the (now three) Libertarian groups in Arizona.

Finally, there's a chance to beat up on a government agency through the court system:

8) Sue Arizona. Insist we are Constitutionally entitled to be able to petition for ballot status for our candidate after our National Convention, which is not unreasonably late in the year. This approach, says my good legal sources, is reasonably promising. [[GP: Indeed, this is what we did, and it eventually worked.]]

I'm not sure that's all the choices that exist, but it's all the ones I've heard.

Listening to Arizona

I called people in the Phoenix group. They're the ones with ballot access. I am reporting what is perceived and stated, as I understood it from members of the Phoenix group. Remember "X is not true" is independent of "group A believes that X is not true".

1) Does the ALP want its affiliation back? So far as I can tell, many of them aren't very interested. They are planning on recruiting, running candidates, supporting or opposing referenda,...not on arguing with LNC. Their position, so far as I can tell, is 'the LNC chose its affiliate. The LNC gets to live with its decision.'

2) Did the ALP ask the LNC to decide which group was the real Libertarian party in Arizona? The position I was given was that ALP members urged the LNC to make no decision until the judge made his decision. The LNC, says the ALP, didn't wait. LPUS affiliated one group; the judge gave state recognition to the other group.

3) What about the disaffiliation process? ALP members note that the LPUS Bylaws provide that affiliation can only be removed "for cause". "for cause" is not an idle phrase; it means that the group being disaffiliated must have done something wrong, and must be given reasonable due process to defend themselves against accusations. The ALP group denies that a "cause" was ever specified to them. They were therefore unable to defend themselves against implicit accusations that they had created a cause.

4) Why was there a Casa Grande mediation? [This was representatives of the two groups meeting with an LNC representative, at a point midway between Phoenix and Tucson.] The position I am given from the ALP side is that the ALP was asked to indicate people who would be unacceptable as mediators, and was then informed that mediation was occurring. The ALP—say most ALP activists—did not ask the LNC for mediation. They were, however, prepared to be civil to people visiting the state. So far as I can determine, there is a substantial ALP group saying that it should not pursue affiliation ever again, and another group willing to try to repair relations between the ALP and the LNC.

5) What happened at Casa Grande? While some ALP members say they were sworn to secrecy, others say that the mediator—our National Chair—only wanted to discuss ballot access for the Presidential candidate, and did not appear to be interested in the other issues separating the two groups. I am repeatedly told that at this meeting both sides repeated their public positions without significant variation. So far as I can determine, the perception from the meeting is that each group wanted the other to dissolve and assume a completely subservient position in the other.

6) What are the underlying fundamental issues? To my ear, the disagreements I heard from the Arizona people go back to our Party Platform. To what extent can a State regulate the structure of a political party? To what extent should Libertarian candidates for office accept matching funds or other taxpayer subsidies of their campaigns? These are substantial issues. The ALP maintains that political parties are basically private groups, and condemns accepting money from the government for political purposes.

7) What is the contest about? Could the two groups live and let live? There are issues that are difficult, and issues that are impossible. Impossible to compromise: Only one group can control appointment of Presidential electors and the name on the ballot. Only one group can receive the lists of registered voters from the state.

Below the Presidential level, candidates are determined by primary, based on petitioning for ballot access. Thus, both groups could run candidates in the Libertarian primary by petitioning. They did it in 1998. Candidates either do or do not take matching funds. That's an individual decision, candidate by candidate, not a Party decision. So far as I can determine, nothing in State Law precludes a situation in which some candidates accept matching funds, while other candidates reject them. Some people in Arizona will not like this situation, and will not endorse candidates if they take matching funds, but non-endorsement is not an insuperable obstacle. On the other hand, Arizona has an active referendum system. The groups differ on several issues, so if both groups were active the party would not speak with one voice.

8) Is there energy wasted in lawsuits? The ALP members flatly maintain they have never sued the ALPI. They claim that they have been sued by the ALPI, and have always won. The ALP or its members have, however, sued the state of Arizona with some frequency about state ballot laws.

Having said this, various ALP members noted two complications that might lead people to think they had sued the other group: [If you don't like legal fine print, skip ahead]

(a) A suit against the state by the ALP had a significant effect on the other group and one of our Presidential candidates. An Arizona legal process then gave the other group and the candidate entrance into the suit, because the topics being adjudicated could affect the other group and the candidate substantially.

(b) A county official, to perform her legal duties, needed a legal ruling as to which group was the Libertarian Party recognized by Arizona. The official sued, so the courts would tell her what to do. Meanwhile, the ALP with the support of the Democratic and Republican parties was suing the state, over issues that affected every political party in the state. The judicial system merged the two cases, leaving opponents of the law on one side, and supporters on the other. The two Arizona groups were now in the same suit on opposite sides, but that was the judge carrying out Arizona legal procedure. The contest was over the constitutionality of a state law; the two groups were not suing each other. The two state government groups involved then bowed out, leaving our two Arizona groups as active litigators. By standard legal policy, the side opposing the law was termed the "plaintiff", that being the ALP, the other side being the "defendant", that being the Tucson group, but the suit was over the law not against the other side.

9) What does the ALP want at this point? The message I think they heard is that they want to be left alone to do activism. They view their methods as being more guerrilla or theatrical than the methods used by other parties. For example, on one occasion they raffled off an AK47 as the fundraiser. However, the ALP has accepted the LNC's decision that they are cast out from the Libertarian Party. They will therefore run the Presidential candidate that they like and can support, and expect our affiliate to do the same.

From the people I have listened to, accusations against the ALP of vindictiveness or spite do not sound to be generally correct. The ALP people view 'You get to live with your decisions' as being fundamental to a working Libertarian society. People who complain about the consequence of their decision, namely that it is somehow the fault of the Phoenix group that the LNC has the wrong affiliate, after they urged the LNC not to strip their ballot status, are viewed as showing their lack of belief in Libertarian Principles. The ALP is very strong on our being the Party of Principle."

That's what I learned at the time, in Summer 2000.

In 2000, the Phoenix group did vote that if the LNC restored its affiliation that their governing body was required to put the National Party's Presidential candidate on the Arizona ballot. At the 2000 National Convention, the National Committee proposed an agreement between the two Arizona groups and National. The Phoenix group asked for an explanation of certain language, or so I was told, and then signed the original form of the document. The Tucson group declined to sign the unamended document, and instead signed a document that they had amended.

The Phoenix group then invited Harry Browne to come to Arizona and explain why he should be the Arizona LP's candidate, even though the Phoenix group was no longer part of the Party that had nominated Browne. Browne did not accept the invitation. With Browne absent, the Phoenix group as the legally- recognized Arizona Libertarian Party would put the best available Libertarian candidate on the ballot. In the end, the Arizona State Party chose to run L. Neil Smith as their 2000 candidate for President.

The National Party petitioned to put Harry Browne on the state ballot as an independent. The 2000 report of the LPUS Political Director describes these efforts to petition for Harry Browne in Arizona after the National Convention. The National Party eventually spent more than $63,000 on petitioning and legal efforts. The petitioning, done after the legal deadline, collected enough signatures and led to a lawsuit which at latest report is still being litigated.

Writing of support from the Tucson group, the LPUS Political Director said in his annual report "The onsite management from Peter Schmerl and Alexis Thompson did not materialize. Schmerl took almost two weeks to come up with the slate of independent electors and to draft the petition....When I arrived we had less than 3,000 signatures...I managed to organize the collection of some 19,000 signatures in 8 days."

At the time of this writing, in late 2001, the Tucson group is running a State Party, and the Phoenix group is working on alternatives, notably local elections and guerrilla theater leafletting attacking the Homeland Security Office, with leaflets being distributed in airports.

Appendix

The Non-Initiation Oath

A significant part of the Arizona debate has referred back to the non-initiation of force Oath, which the National Party and some, but not all, state parties require of their members. The Oath, which dates back to the founding days of the Libertarian Party, is an agreement that Party members will not support the initiation of force to resolve social or political issues.

The difficulty is that there is a lack of unanimity, to put it mildly, as to what this statement means. During my last National Chair campaign, I listened to many Libertarians as they explained their interpretation of the Oath to me.

The author of the statement is the Party's Founder, David Nolan. Nolan has repeatedly said publicly that the oath is an agreement that we are a political party, and we are out to attain change through the peaceful use of orthodox political processes. No more grandiose interpretation was intended. In understanding the oath, one was supposed to recall the context of the times in which they were written. In 1972, left-wing anti-war activists were planting bombs, several each day, in government offices and other places across the United States. The Capitol Building itself was repeatedly attacked. The intent of the oath was to make clear that the Libertarian Party was not associated with the radical left revolutionaries of that period.

Within the Libertarian Party, one readily encounters a second interpretation of the Oath, namely that the Oath requires one to oppose any political action that could be termed 'initiation of force', with this phrase being very broadly interpreted. In particular, after an extensive exegesis, 'opposition to initiation of force' is taken to require one to oppose taxation and the products of taxation. Indeed, some Party members who support this interpretation claim that one can logically derive all moral conclusions from the non-initiation principle, a matter discussed in the Appendix to the Appendix.

A significant complication is that phrases very much like those in the Oath are attributed to the writings of Ayn Rand, where precisely these interpretations are invoked. Rand—a mid-twentieth century author and philosopher —was an active opponent of the Libertarian Party who condemned involvement in the Libertarian Party by her followers. It is my understanding that Nolan maintains he was not thinking of her words when he wrote the Oath, and therefore that her phrasings do not inform the meaning of the Oath that he wrote.

Within the Libertarian Party one also encounters many Libertarians who take an third interpretation of the Oath, an interpretation that precisely contradicts the second interpretation. In the third interpretation, it remains the specific duty of government to prevent the initiation of force, and therefore Libertarians mandatorily must support collection of taxes to maintain a justice system, a constabulary, and a military. If the second interpretation borders on support for anarchism, the third interpretation holds that anarchism is fundamentally incompatible with Libertarian beliefs. It is my impression that the three sides are similar in level of support within the LP, but not equally bellicose in expressing their faiths.

Under unfavorable circumstances, discussions between Libertarians who believe these interpretations can consume all the time of a Libertarian group, leaving absolutely no time for political activity. The National Party faced up to this question once. At an early National Convention delegates subscribed to the 'Dallas Accords', which in essence said that: We are so far from needing to settle the question that we shouldn't argue about it.  Partisans of the two sides agree not to use their statements to shut the other side out of the Party.

APPENDIX TO THE APPENDIX

The Axiom of Choice and Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem

It is almost certainly the case that you should skip this section. It had little to do with the rest of the book.

However, once upon a time I almost tried to become a professional mathematician. There is a specific issue that I find sufficiently annoying that I am going to discuss it here. You really want to turn ahead to the next chapter now.

In short, one occasionally encounters assertions from some libertarians that all moral decisions can be 'logically derived from the non-initiation principle'. My thesis here is that the phrase 'logically derived' as invoked in the previous sentence is a process of religious faith whose properties are fundamentally antilogical:  They are indubitably logically inconsistent with the process 'logically derived' that most readers encountered in plane geometry.

Skip to the next chapter. This is your last warning.

I am going to omit almost all mathematical details, so what I have to say reduced to four paragraphs.

First, we have the 'Axiom of Choice'. What does the Axiom of Choice say? Suppose I form a collection of objects, all of which have some property. For example, I could make a list of all human women. According to the Axiom of Choice, I can then choose a representative person from that list, and we have agreement that 'this person is a woman'. Now, given several interesting medical issues involving unusual chromosomal sorting, genetic defects, and the wonders of modern gender alteration surgery, there can be a range of opinions as to who belongs on that list. Sometimes one realizes that the definition of the list is incomplete or unambiguous. That doesn't matter; definitions are in the end arbitrary. There is no claim that I can identify every single person on the list. The Axiom of Choice only claims that, for any list chosen to include all objects with a particular property, I can choose a representative object, which is prominent in no way except that it is an example of the objects on the list.  Thus, I can choose a representative woman, who with respect to her membership on the list is distinguished only by being a human female.   There is no implication that the object is typical in any sense.  I may choose an average woman.  I may choose the richest woman in the world.  However, when discussing her, I am allowed only to refer to her as being female, not to her as being average or well-to-do.  Similarly, when I choose a representative triangle, that triangle might or might not be a right triangle, but nothing in the proof can take advantage of the triangle’s being or not being a right triangle.  The Axiom of Choice, once you understand it, sounds fairly obvious, except that it also applies to lists that have an infinite number of members.

Second, the Axiom of Choice is the basis of modern mathematical proofs. Modern proofs do not resemble the proofs that most readers saw in plane geometry. Modern proofs work by examining counterexamples. I give a simple case. Suppose we have a theorem 'the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is 180 degrees'. A counterexample disproves the theorem. If I can show you a single triangle whose internal angles do not add to 180 degrees, I have disproven the theorem as stated. How in modern mathematics do I prove the theorem? I announce 'consider a triangle whose angles do not add to 180 degrees'. I just invoked the Axiom of Choice. I selected a representative triangle with these particular properties and no others. Now I examine other properties of this odd triangle, and derive a contradiction, for example that the alleged triangle must have at least four corners. That's a contradiction; by definition triangles only have three corners. Therefore, I have shown that any triangle that is a counterexample to the theorem 'the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is 180 degrees', is self-contradictory.  It therefore does not exist. Ergo, all triangles must obey the theorem. Note that I have just proven the theorem without showing for even one triangle that the sum of the internal angles is 180 degrees.

Third, until early in the last century the objective of mathematics was to reduce all results to logical derivations from a few axioms. Along came the German mathematician Kurt Goedel. Goedel proved, using the Axiom of Choice, that except in trivially simple logical systems you cannot produce a simple set of axioms that describe all mathematical results. That is, in any complicated mathematical system there are an infinite number of statements that are true, but that cannot be derived from any simple set of axioms using orthodox logic.* Alternatively, Goedel showed that excepting truly trivial logical systems all complete logical systems have an infinite number of independent axioms.

Fourth, we now return to the statement that all moral decisions can be logically derived from the non-initiation principle, which may be phrased as an axiom: 'any act that violates the non-initiation principle is immoral'.  Any moral question may be phrased as a theorem 'this action does not have the property immoral.' Morality is not mathematically trivial. Ergo, from the Axiom of Choice and the Goedel Incompleteness Theorem there are actions that are moral or that are immoral that cannot be logically proven to be moral or immoral from any short set of axioms. Claims that one can logically derive all moral conclusions from the Non-Initiation Principle are claims that an entire nontrivial logical system can be derived from a single axiom.  Such claims are mathematically incompatible with the properties of mathematical logic, and must be recognized as non-logical statements of faith.

FOOTNOTE TO THE APPENDIX TO THE APPENDIX

*The Axiom of Choice could be in error. There are several truly remarkable mathematical results that do not look entirely reasonable that have been derived using the axiom. There is an alternative to the axiom that I have seen given several names, e.g., constructivism, which holds that proof by showing the falsity of counterexamples is invalid.  Valid proofs must advance by positive calculation. For example, suppose you want to claim that you can take a sphere, cut it into five parts, and reassemble your five pieces into two new spheres, each, by the way, having the same volume as the initial sphere.  To do so via constructivism you must specify the cuts. [No, that is not an arbitrary example; it is a very important example.] With the Axiom of Choice you can prove that you can slice a sphere into five parts and reassemble them into two spheres, each having the volume of the original sphere.

See, I told you that you should skip to the next chapter.

Forward to Chapter 18

The CMLC Index Pages

The CMLC Publications Pages

Funding Liberty! Table of Contents